Collar of Stars
by MistyMew
Summary: She's spent her whole miserable life in the TRHQ, but now, with the help of her rebelling human partner, she searches for escape...and revenge! But this may take more courage than she can imagine, especially since she's just a half-blind Persian!


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Author's Notes: Well, this is my first major pokémon POV fanfic. It's pretty-no, I take that back- it's **very** sad, and it just gets worse as it goes on, so if you can't handle emotion, don't read it. The title has a very deep symbolism, but it's hard to figure out, so I don't expect you to get it. I personally like this character I'm writing about, and I hope you like her, too. It's longer than most pokémon POVs you see these days, and this is just the first chapter. See you at the end of the chapter! 

Collar of Stars

Chapter One: My First World

"Once upon a time" is a terrible beginning for a story. Almost as horrible as "And they lived happily ever after" is for an ending. 

But putting aside my grievances for those dumb, unoriginal fragments of what you always know will be a happy, upbeat story, ending with the characters living the rest of their lives joyous and in harmony, I have a story to tell. 

It is comparably short, but thankfully it really has no end. No true ending at least. That's the way stories should be told, for life isn't kind enough for you to live "happily ever after." And I should know.

Just as this story has no end, it also has no true beginning. But I shall start where it seems appropriate. 

I was born in a place I remember all too well. My mother used to tell me I was born on the morning when the sun didn't rise. That seems correct, for the first thing I remember was darkness. But then again, the first thing I remember was days after I entered this cruel life. I opened my eyes, and there was a buzzing, silent nothing for a lingering while. But then I blinked the darkness rapidly away, and my world became a fuzzy, but solid place. Fortunately I didn't know what those stinking pools of wretched crimson on the cold stone floor were, or those still clumps of fur that appeared far too thrashed to ever have housed life, or I would never have had the courage to venture from my nest. My mother was almost as badly scarred as the carcasses on the floor; she was not only starving, but had been beaten relentlessly all of her mercilessly long life. Poor thing was lucky to have died three months later. But, anyway, back to when she still felt pain. 

She stared at me with these eyes, so sunken and devoid of any emotion, that she herself appeared to have faded from anything really happening to her. She lived in some other world, she truly did. While her body remained here, her mind wandered to the very edges of existence, to where nothing existed that made sense. I clearly remember when I would bat at her with my awkward paws playfully, and she would vacantly turn her gaze towards me to give me this look of… longing… and perhaps even memory. Those were the only times she ever looked directly at me. Any other times she turned her sullen eyes to me, her offspring, it seemed more like she was dully gazing at something of interest behind me, like I was translucent. But, in the unwavering trust of the young, I still loved her like nothing else. Then again, she was the only one I had in all this ostensibly eternal darkness, the only one I had ever known. 

The times were so hard for her; occasionally she would curl her body desperately around me, almost gruffly, and bury her frozen black nose into my furry neck, unable to cry with weakness but still trembling uncontrollably as if she could. She was crying inside. It was in those few and far-between moments of her needing my company that I realized that I was the only thing she had left, too. So we would lie there together, her shedding tears inside for my grim future, and me shedding cold outward tears for my misunderstanding about why she was so sad. 

We were fed once a day, by a man clad in pure black. He would open the door the slightest bit, and bleak artificial light would come streaming in. I would squint against the bright light that my eyes were unused to and watch as he flung a single piece of some sort of raw flesh. Then the light would swallow up with a dispirited creak and my mother would drag her useless back legs behind her the best she could over to the hunk of red flesh and throw her muzzle ravenously into it. Then I would scuttle over to her and nurse as she ate. 

Our water was housed in a cloudy metal dish, large enough to keep us for about a week, but the sanitation level of that water was questionable. The man would actually come into our chamber twice a month to fill our water dish up, and when he did my mother would pitifully gape at him, the familiar look of outlying acceptance evident in her shadowed eyes, until he left. 

Luckily, she never allowed me to go anywhere near the many mangled bodies of pokémon strewn across our cell. I was certainly fascinated with these silent, unmoving creatures and on several occasions I attempted to approach them with great caution, but she would always open her mouth when I did and make a low, gradual "Mowww…." That never failed to make me change my course from heading towards the carcasses to romping over to her. After a while I understood that the bodies were off limits. 

But I didn't know what to do the day she became one of them. She had again coiled her miserably skeletal frame around me, but this time it had been different. Her breathing had been labored, and her rib cage billowed up and down powerfully, almost bruising my delicate body. Then it had just abruptly stopped, and I had cuddled into her sparse, ragged fur, content that her ribs no longer ballooned in that unnatural way. But what I didn't know was that her rugged, strenuous breath would never again start. 

I woke up when drafts finally penetrated my short beige fur. I was perturbed to find that her body had become cool and angular while I had slept, no longer warm and cuddly like it had once been. A bit angry in my youthful way that she no longer provided the necessary warmth, I began to mew demandingly. When she didn't answer, I became somewhat frantic. I meowed at her with all the force in my tiny voicebox, and gnawed in frustration on the end of her stiff tail. But she didn't wake. And I didn't understand. 

It was when I saw her eyes, so overcast that I could no longer see her pupils staring straight into nothingness that I gave up. I knew then that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. 

I was scared, terrified actually. Terrified, cold, and hungry…. As I stared at her still body, my vision began to cloud over as bitter tears of desperation welled in my eyes. They dribbled down my face, freely dripping off my face and onto her blood and dirt stained coat. I allowed a soft squeal of "Mama…" escape my throat along with my tears. And, as a profound feeling that she needed me overcame me; I rested my chin on her protruding ribs and sobbed into her fur, finally letting my tense body release into limpness as I shed tears over the loss I suddenly knew I had suffered. 

Eventually I became fearful of her empty body, seeing as she had always taught me to stay away from the nonliving resemblances of pokémon, and now, what used to be my mother, my only light in life, had faded into nothing but another distorted body littering the cell. I backed slowly away when I was done with my mourning, staring at the empty shell of my mom with horrified wonder. I skittered backwards, tail drooping beneath my legs, all the way to the cold corner of my living quarters, where I arched myself into a tight ball, too scared and drowsy to grieve for her any longer. In such a depressing story you could expect me to say I cried myself to sleep, but the truth is perchance sadder than what you would expect.

I took the path of my deceased mother, withdrawing from the world in favor of a different one, one that I could control with my simplistic mind to make me happy. I had friends; all resembling my mom and a few of the corpses, for I figured the corpses had once been alive, too. What more do you think I could do? They were the only things I had seen all of my short life. I gave them names, and spoke to them in my innocent questioning "Meeewww…?"s, and they would smile toothily and talk back in ridiculous babbling tones. Back there, in my fantasy world, my mother was still with me, and she was happy instead of despairing like she had always been. We would romp together in fields of gray stone and piercing black, playing and purring and just enjoying each other's company. Again, I didn't even know there was anything outside of what I seen. 

But one day, all that happiness dwelling in my dreams, was stabbed, by…a sliver…a sliver of outside light…. 

The heavy stone door swung gingerly open, and intense light came spilling in, some of it mercifully shadowed by the man's black silhouette. My very world shattered into tiny, confusing fragments on the light's impact, and I squinted into it blearily as I let out a pathetic, half-hearted hiss. 

The human's face was twisted in a terribly uncaring way, and he glared at me through vengefully narrowed amber eyes. That shut me up.

His gaze traveled from my scrunched up body to my mother's dilapidated and vacant one. Her features had begun to twist away from recognition in rapid decomposition. The smell was the most putrid thing I have ever sniffed, but by now I was used to the scent of death. I had never smelled any other. 

The man whirled around hastily, his face crumpling against the horrible stench. He yelled out expressionlessly behind him, into the dazzling lights, "Hey boss, that, uh, old persian of yours finally died, and boy is she stinking up the place. What should I do with the kitten, it's still alive. Should I leave it to die, too?" 

A gruff voice coming from the beyond my vision, in the light, grumbled something incoherent under his breath, then barked out authoritatively "Do whatever you want with it. You can have it if you want." 

The black-suited man, who was still standing timidly in the doorway curved to glance briefly at me. 

I felt a shiver run up my spine. I backed up a little farther into the corner; bugging out my eyes and parting my mouth slightly to let an apprehensive, petite "Mew?" escape it. 

The man's eyes, which were hardened with duty, softened slightly when I blinked innocently at him. His rigid body posture slacked a bit, and he turned around again to face "boss." 

"Y-ye-yes boss, will do." He squeaked, and I got the impression just from his voice that someone big and important was looming over him. To him a question from this 'boss' was an order.

The boss gave a weird chuckle-like sound, a sort of deep chortle if you will, then went quiet. 

The man, who I only knew from the daily feedings and occasional water changing, sauntered loosely into the cell, timorously scuffing his matching black shoes against the filthy stone floor. I watched him with large marble eyes aware as he squatted a few feet in front of my tremulous body, and tentatively held out a lightly balled hand. I gazed at it in fascination, tucking my cinnamon-tipped tail beneath my back legs shyly. 

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, some sort of human greeting I figured, but I remained where I was. I wasn't about to trust just anyone who came along. After a few minutes of a sort of odd standoff in which we weren't standing, he began to get a bit frustrated and impatient. He didn't say so or anything, but I could see it his yellowish, almost catty eyes when they clouded over a minuscule amount. 

He made a harmless swipe at me in a weak attempt to pick me up, but I skittered to the side at the last second. He crumpled his mouth in annoyance, but still tried, quite pathetically, to keep a modestly dancing smile on his face. 

I glowered at him mischievously; picking up one childishly outsized paw to lick in aloof grooming. 

The man sighed, a bit discouraged by my mistrustful nature. I guess he didn't realize I was playing a game with him. 

I looked up in few minutes from my tidying to see that he had seated himself on the grimy floor and had fallen to chewing his lip silently. He seemed a bit squeamish about the dried blood puddles reeking on the floor, as he kept shifting his weight from side to side as he looked down, only to realize he hadn't yet escaped the grime. 

When he became conscious of my staring at him, (which was directed away a smidgen too slowly) he heaved another dispirited sigh, cleared his throat, and began to talk meekly to me, almost like he believed I was in charge. I decided I liked that, so I gave him my full attention, but my paw still hovered readily in case he said something I didn't like.

"Look, um, Meowth, I don't want to scare you…or hurt you, either. I just want to get you out of this place." He glanced about my living quarters in disgust. "Wouldn't you like someone to talk to? Your mama's dead, and you're just gonna die if I leave you here. So whadda ya say?" He gave me a hopeful grin, to which I answered with a stronger than usual, although still hesitant, "Mewth…." 

With those last words of his my view of his personality suddenly transformed from him being a heartless idiot, to a living thing, just like me. I trained my eyes away from him for a moment, staring mutely at the floor in speculation. Would this be for the best? I would be leaving behind everything I had ever known, for a new life, an unpredictable one, one I could never control. Was that…the way it was…meant to be? 

While I mulled over the decision, the man began to talk again. His voice was tinted with pain, as he uttered words I suddenly understood all too well. I pricked my ears gently, not enough to be visible, but enough so I could concentrate on every word. 

"Meowth, I don't know how to say this, but… I'm…I'm an orphan, too." His voice fell into a tone that was barely above a whisper. "My parents…died… at the hands of the leader of Team Rocket. Your mother…is only dead because of him, too. He's the one who locked her up in here, when she was pregnant with you. All because she disobeyed him once. What he didn't realize, is that she was…half-deaf, because of something that happened when she was young. But even if he did know that was why she sometimes didn't listen to him, he would have killed her anyway. Probably even more painfully than the death she already suffered. How do I know? She…used to be…my…" He gulped back tears. "She used to be my pokémon partner, until Giovanni-my boss- took her away because I never had the heart to steal people's pokémon. He thought he looked more evil with such a devious looking creature at his heels, always obeying his every command. And maybe he did, I'm not one to judge. But the fact stands, if a pokémon-or human, for that matter- dares disobey Giovanni, they must die…a most horrible death. So what to you say we escape together? We can go find a new life, where we can be happy…. I'm ready whenever you are." 

For a long moment I could only gape at him. I felt my eyes glass over with emotion and understanding, and slowly, unhurriedly, I began to pad over to him, my footsteps thudding softly, dramatically, against the stone floor. As I reached the place he was kneeling, I went and soothingly rubbed against his leg, letting a ragged purr rumble from the depths of my throat as he smiled shyly down at me, lifting a hand to stroke my tattered coat. I allowed him to pick me up and hold me to his chest, while murmuring reassuringly in my ear "It's okay…it's okay…." 

It was as he began to walk forward that I was seized by a fit of fear. My eyes widened uneasily and I extended my claws from their sheaths, digging them into his faded black shirt. Feeling a wave of both sadness and dread wash over me, I obscured my face in his rough shirt, gazing blatantly at the blood red 'R' printed on it. I remember wondering what it could mean. I found it was far too difficult to take a last look at my first -and only- home, knowing I would never see it again. It was as I was quivering into the dim warmth of my new owner that my blind panic bubbled up, causing me to suddenly think: 'We forgot Mama!"

I began mewing hysterically and struggling a bit; ears pinned back in frustration. But my owner didn't let go, nor did he tighten his grasp on my puny body. No, he remained the same, stroking my stained fur gently. And, as I look back on that particular event, I realize it was the best thing he could do, for I stopped in a moment, swallowing back tears of rushed and sudden homesickness and realizing with a buzzing awareness that she was gone, and it was for the best that I was leaving her empty body. Out of the blue, I missed her terribly, though. 

Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep in his warm arms, content in a sorrowful and lonely way. And I remained that way as he strode simply past the stone door that had always kept me trapped in my own little cold world, and he stepped into a new, bright world. A _real_ world. 

_Author's Notes: Well, that's just the beginning of this Meowth's adventures, journeys, and (unfortunately) sorrows. She'll have a nickname by next chapter, and the plot will begin to come together (yes, it does have a plot). I would just love it if you would review for me (or for this Meowth if you like her better than you like me), it really makes my dysfunctional little world of fanfics and pokémon a much better place! Thanks SO much in advance, you peeps are the best! _

MistyMew (o^ : ^o)Piiika!


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